Power restored after outage blacks out large swathes of Joburg

Power was restored to several suburbs in and around Johannesburg that were hit by a widespread power outage lasting about two hours on Friday.

Technicians restored power to affected areas that included Craighall, Parkhurst, Hyde Park, Randburg, Sandton and Midrand.

"All City Power customers who were affected by Eskom's loss of supply are fully restored," City Power said in an update.

Eskom spokesperson Kulu Phasiwe said although power had been restored from a high voltage point of view, downstream customers could take longer to be reconnected due to switching in distribution networks.

"Apologies for the inconvenience caused."

City Power said in a statement that the outage was caused by a 400kV Eskom line that had tripped.

"This power line feeds City Power's Delta sub-station. Delta sub-station is one of the City Power intake points of Eskom electricity supply. Eskom had isolated one of the two lines feeding Delta substation to do planned maintenance work. During the course of the maintenance the other line that was feeding City Power tripped."

Phasiwe said earlier in a tweet: "Eskom is aware of a major power outage that affects large parts of Midrand, Sandton and several areas in the northern suburbs of Joburg. Eskom technicians are on site to determine the cause of the outage. No estimated time of restoration at this stage."

Business and home owners vented their frustration on social media earlier‚ directing a stream of tweets at City Power.

Londanani Mmbara, a dentist based in Randburg, said the practice was badly affected by the outage.

Mmbara said they had patients lined up for a special offer, which included free teeth cleaning.

"We were waiting to help patients and the electricity just cut off. There was no notification or warning that it was going to cut off so that we could have prepared ourselves," Mmbara told TimesLIVE.

Mmbara said they had to reschedule about five appointments due to the power outages.

"It is really frustrating, it is not the first time and it really disturbs our business.

"If you are losing out on 10  patients a day, you are losing out on a lot of money in a dental practice. This is the money used to pay rent and our employees and cover other expenses," Mmbara said.

A report, yet to be independently verified, said the outage resulted in a cash-in-transit money box being dropped at South Gate Mall when the lights went out.

The cash box apparently "exploded" in the mall.